OpenSchedule for Android

Back in mid-February, I was offered the opportunity to create some graphics for an Android application called OpenSchedule. It’s an application which lets you view and manage information on upcoming conferences and events registered with the OpenSchedule web app. This tied in nicely with the Linux conference stuff I’ve worked on (more on that in some upcoming posts), so I was glad to help out.

I had done a little bit of Android graphical work a while back for the ILF App which consisted of coming up with some background images and an icon. This was a little big more involved in that I needed to create the launcher icon, tab icons and promo images for the Android market.

As usual I learned a few things along the way:

Eclipse can seem like a mystery inside an enigma wrapped in a straitjacket to the non-developer like me. I jumped through my fair share of hoops to get updated resources to show up properly in the emulator. This mobile development thing is not something you come at likely. Full respect to those who do it well.

Guidelines for the creation of Android launcher icons can be found here.

Likewise, a good description of the promo image requirements (as well as other graphic requirements) is over here. And lastly,

Daniel Frey (the creator of OpenSchedule) is one patient bastard. I peppered him with a stream of newbie questions related to point #1 and he didn’t flinch. – Thanks Dan!

So I ended up creating this launcher icon:

And for the Event, Schedule, and Venue Tabs, the following icons (selected and unselected versions as per guidelines):

And once that was all out of the way, Dan pointed out that there were some optional promo/feature graphics. These show up when you see the app’s market page on your phone and what you see on the web market page as well. Again, sticking to their requirements, I came up with the following two versions:

180px x 120px version:

and a 1024px x 500px version:

All in all a very enjoyable little project. Thanks for the opportunity Dan.

If you want to try out the app, you can get it here, or hit the QR code below with your Android phone: